]]>St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church in Lower Manhattan was crushed by the falling Twin Towers during the terrorist attacks on 9/11. On October 18, the site for the future church, a national shrine, was dedicated by leaders of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.

]]>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2014/10/24/october-24-2014-ground-zero-church-will-rebuild/24437/feed/4Greek Orthodox,Ground Zero,September 11,World Trade CenterThe new St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, set to be rebuilt at the World Trade Center, will be a national shrine and will include a nondenominational bereavement center. "Next to the place where the most tragic thing that has ever happened on America...The new St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, set to be rebuilt at the World Trade Center, will be a national shrine and will include a nondenominational bereavement center. "Next to the place where the most tragic thing that has ever happened on American soil," says Father Evagoras Constantinides of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, "it needs to be a place to offer, to welcome, to open, and to accept all sorts of people."Religion & Ethics NewsWeeklyno2:30 9/11 Then and Nowhttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/09/09/september-9-2011-911-then-and-now/9480/
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/09/09/september-9-2011-911-then-and-now/9480/#commentsFri, 09 Sep 2011 21:50:12 +0000http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/?p=9480More →

]]>KIM LAWTON, correspondent: In New York’s mid-Hudson Valley, Aziz Ahsan, his wife, and three kids are looking at some old photos. These family times are becoming increasingly rare now that the two oldest children are in college. Ahsan says he values these moments more than ever.

AZIZ AHSAN: 9/11 for me was an event that made my relationship with my family stronger, because now that every time I look at my family I am thankful that I am alive. I can touch them, I can feel them, and so it has created a stronger bond.

LAWTON: Ahsan, who is Muslim, was at the World Trade Center on 9/11. He went to the post office there to buy a special new Islamic-themed stamp. Just after he left the plane hit, and he was struck by pieces of the crumbling tower. Hours later, Ahsan was able to make his way home covered in debris, with serious eye injuries.

SHAHZAD AHSAN: I remember walking over to him and wanting to hug him, and he said, “No, don’t. Wait. Don’t get all this stuff on you.” But I just hugged him anyway because I just had to.

LAWTON: Ahsan put his debris-covered clothes in a bag. He says he hasn’t opened it again since he showed them to me nine years ago. He keeps the bag in his garage and hopes to donate the clothes to a 9/11 museum. Shahzad was 13 when the attacks occurred. He told me he felt a backlash from people who blamed all Muslims.

SHAHZAD AHSAN (file interview): I couldn’t understand why people would hate Muslims when they were the victims of the attack as well.

LAWTON: Ahsan decided he and his family should reach out to their community and show a different view of Islam. He got involved in local causes, was appointed to the zoning board of appeals, and successfully ran for president of the school board.

AZIZ AHSAN: When people like myself and others who stood up and made Muslim a household name or became part of the news stories on a regular basis, it made it that much easier for people to realize that Muslims are in our community.

LAWTON: He and his family created and now sell a Muslim identity symbol. It can be placed in a window or on a desk and in its large form, a public park.

AZIZ AHSAN: I just want to make people aware that we are proud to be Americans, and we’re proud to be Muslims.

LAWTON: The Ahsans also got involved with interfaith projects. Shahzad and several Muslim friends worked with Jewish teens on a “Salaam-Shalom” video project to create awareness about anti-religious bigotry and bullying.

SHAHZAD AHSAN: When I was younger my father was really big on trying to get me to understand that this is important. Even what seems like small events are important, because you might be the first Muslim friend someone’s ever had.

LAWTON: Shahzad is now studying political science at the University of Chicago and hopes to find positive ways of portraying American Muslims. His father says that’s the lesson they all learned from 9/11.

AZIZ AHSAN: Those opportunities became much more available after 9/11, and for people like me who participated, got involved, reached out, the community reached back, and it’s important for the rest of the Muslim American community to get more involved. Don’t be shy. Don’t be afraid.

LAWTON: In western Pennsylvania, the small town of Shanksville looks much the same as it did ten years ago before passenger resistance brought down hijacked Flight 93. But this town was indelibly altered on that day.

REV. ROBERT WAY (St. John Lutheran Church, Clearfield, Penn.): The spiritual lesson I think that we probably learned, really, was that we are one, that as a people we are one, that Shanksville people are not different than New York people, aren’t different than Washington, D.C. people, that we’re all the same people.

LAWTON: Lutheran pastor Robert Way had arrived in Shanksville just days before 9/11. It was his first church assignment.

WAY (file interview): I honestly do not believe that the people of this area would have welcomed me as openly as they have already had it not been for the flight. I think it has really framed what my ministry has been but also has opened not only myself to them, but their lives to me.

LAWTON: He says the crash continues to have a spiritual impact for him.

WAY: Probably emboldened more in my spirit, just to understand that evil is a part of our world. Evil can touch even those of us who are in rural western Pennsylvania.

LAWTON: Ten years after 9/11, Way has just arrived at a new assignment at St. John Lutheran Church in Clearfield, about 70 miles away. But he remains heavily involved in Shanksville. He’s an ambassador for the Flight 93 National Memorial and volunteers at the park every week, retelling the story of what happened there, both the tragedy and the heroism.

WAY: I believe the site really is a site of social engagement and calling people into that engagement once again. We have often used the term that the people aboard the plane really stepped up to the plate, and now it’s our turn to step up to the plate, and the people of Shanksville have done that.

LAWTON: At the site of Ground Zero in New York, Greek Orthodox parishioners are frustrated that plans to rebuild St. Nicholas Church have been locked in stalemate.

JIM KOKOTAS (American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association): They were here before the twin towers, were here before the stock exchange was here, and they deserve the right to be rebuilt. The people need a place to worship.

LAWTON: St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church was the only house of worship destroyed on 9/11. When the towers fell, the tiny church never stood a chance.

JOHN PITSIKALIS (St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Paris) (file interview): The debris from the south tower literally pancaked our church. You know, it was an unbelievable amount of debris on it.

LAWTON: Only a few remnants were dug out of the rubble: two torn icons, a charred Bible, and some liturgical items, including a twisted candelabra. Most congregation members began worshiping at another Greek Orthodox church in Brooklyn while the church made plans to rebuild. But all rebuilding at Ground Zero is being overseen by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Greek Orthodox officials and the Port Authority had a preliminary agreement to rebuild the church at a different location nearby, but negotiations broke down. The church accused the Port Authority of reneging, and the Port Authority accused the church of making too many demands. The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese filed a federal lawsuit earlier this year, and because of it neither church officials nor the Port Authority are commenting. Meanwhile, Orthodox parishioners are trying to ramp up pressure for a resolution. They say a rebuilt St. Nicholas would provide spiritual support for people of all faiths.

KOKOTAS: This is now a sacred ground, and whatever your denomination is you have to respect the fact that many lives were lost. So the role of the church and that relationship with God and oneself plays an even more important role for the people that are going to be coming here, and St. Nicholas could fill that role for these people.

LAWTON: At Congregation Mount Sinai in Brooklyn Heights, Rabbi Joseph Potasnik says the lingering spiritual impact of 9/11 is profound. He was and still is a chaplain for the New York Fire Department and says he’s been especially inspired by the families of the 343 fire fighters who died on 9/11.

RABBI JOSEPH POTASNIK (Congregation Mount Sinai, Brooklyn Heights, NY): So this is a special reminder of many, many special people who are in our midst and who were in our midst.

LAWTON: Potasnik has experienced 9/11’s aftermath on several fronts: as an FDNY chaplain, executive vice-president of the New York Board of Rabbis, and spiritual leader of a synagogue just across the river from Ground Zero. The twin towers loomed large for his congregation, such as during High Holiday services, when they would walk down to the water for the traditional Tashlikh ritual. Eight years ago, Potasnik told us his people had been deeply scarred.

POTASNIK (file interview): You can’t often heal a scar, but you can cover it, and what we try to do, at least in the spiritual world, is teach people how to cover some of those scars so they can continue to live, and life still has meaning and purpose.

LAWTON: I asked him if some healing has now occurred.

POTASNIK: The healing has taken place because we’re inspired by those who have lost so much and yet love so much and want to live so much. I meet families all the time that have a hole in their hearts, and yet they continue to bring comfort to others. Have we healed? Yes. Healed with a hole. It’s never a complete healing, but at least there is that willingness to write a new chapter of life.

LAWTON: Postasnik has seen some new interreligious tensions, such as the controversy over plans to build an Islamic center near Ground Zero. But he says 9/11 has also opened the door for more interfaith cooperation.

POTASNIK: Those who destroyed those buildings, they wanted to separate us. They don’t want to see Muslims, Jews, and Christians and all the other groupings standing with one another. So the best message that we can convey to those that hate us is, “You will not prevent us from being one family.”

LAWTON: The 9/11 tenth anniversary, he says, is stirring up lots of memories and emotions. This photo was taken when Potasnik visited a makeshift shrine for his fellow fire department chaplain, Father Mychal Judge, who died with other first responders on 9/11.

POTASNIK: The day before 9/11 in the year 2001, I was together with Father Mychal Judge. We stood at a rededication of a fire house. He said in life you have to learn to hold on to memory, hold on to the moment, and hold on to one another. That’s what he said the day before he lost his life. Isn’t that what we’re doing on this anniversary? Isn’t this what we are doing every day?

LAWTON: And if we’re not, he says we should be.

I’m Kim Lawton reporting.

“Have we healed? Yes, healed with a hole. It’s never a complete healing, but at least there a willingness to write a new chapter of life,” says Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, a New York Fire Department chaplain./wnet/religionandethics/files/2011/09/thumb03-thenandnow911.jpg

]]>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/09/09/september-9-2011-911-then-and-now/9480/feed/2American Muslims,bigotry,Christian,Greek Orthodox,Ground Zero,Interfaith,Islam,Jewish,Joseph Potasnik,Muslim,sacred space,September 11“Have we healed? Yes, healed with a hole. It’s never a complete healing, but at least there a willingness to write a new chapter of life,” says Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, a New York Fire Department chaplain.“Have we healed? Yes, healed with a hole. It’s never a complete healing, but at least there a willingness to write a new chapter of life,” says Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, a New York Fire Department chaplain.Religion & Ethics NewsWeeklyno9:47Ten Years Later: Rabbi Joseph Potasnikhttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/09/07/ten-years-later-rabbi-joseph-potasnik/9472/
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]]>A decade after 9/11, managing editor Kim Lawton talks again with Rabbi Joseph Potasnik about that day’s lingering spiritual impact. Potasnik leads Congregation Mount Sinai in Brooklyn Heights. He is executive vice-president of the New York Board of Rabbis and a chaplain for the Fire Department of New York. He reflects here on celebrating Rosh Hashanah at Ground Zero days after the terrorist attacks, the spirituality of firefighters, the persistent presence of hate, and the importance of overcoming divisions.
“We think of 9/11 every day,” says Rabbi Joseph Potasnik of Congregation Mount Sinai in Brooklyn Heights. “All you do when it comes to the anniversary, you try to look back and say have I made a difference?”/wnet/religionandethics/files/2011/09/thumb01-potasniktenyears.jpg

]]>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/09/07/ten-years-later-rabbi-joseph-potasnik/9472/feed/2Chaplains,extremism,Ground Zero,Interfaith,Jewish,rabbi,Rabbi Joseph Potasnik,Rosh Hashanah,September 11,Shofar,Terrorism“We think of 9/11 every day,” says Rabbi Joseph Potasnik of Congregation Mount Sinai in Brooklyn Heights. “All you do when it comes to the anniversary, you try to look back and say have I made a difference?”“We think of 9/11 every day,” says Rabbi Joseph Potasnik of Congregation Mount Sinai in Brooklyn Heights. “All you do when it comes to the anniversary, you try to look back and say have I made a difference?”Religion & Ethics NewsWeeklyno7:54 Sacred Remainshttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/09/02/september-2-2011-sacred-remains/9431/
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]]>BOB FAW, correspondent: On that terrible day ten years ago, when New York City firefighters began responding to the attacks, firefighter Scott Kopytko found that his spot taken by a new recruit.

RUSSELL MERCER: And he was in his position…

JOYCE MERCER: All right. So Scott bumped him off the truck. He told him to get off the truck, you’re in my spot.

FAW: As Scott climbed the stairs of the South Tower to rescue people, it collapsed. Kopytko, 32, was killed. His remains have never been found. In his Forest Hills, New York, hometown, Kopytko is now honored at a small plot lovingly tended by his stepfather. It is the only memorial the family has, and they say it is not enough.

JOYCE MERCER: We’ve never been able to fully go through the normal process of death where you bury your loved one, you grieve, you remember all the good times. This we’ve been stunted in the middle. We know our son is dead, but we’ve never been able to lay him to rest.

RUSSELL MERCER: It’s like being deprived of something, like a meal or a loved one that you had. You don’t have that final solution. I mean, it’s insane. You don’t have no idea what we have to go through.

DIANE HORNING: I think we live in a country where we assume we will be given proper burials. That’s not—but they weren’t. The 9/11 dead were scooped out of the site very quickly with bulldozers and backhoes and dumped into trucks and barges.

FAW: On 9/11, Diane Horning lost her 26-year-old son, Matthew, who was working on the 95th floor of the North Tower. She and some other families have fought hard to get the remains moved to a common burial site.

HORNING: We just want what every person in this country gets, which is a decent, respectful burial, which is what we gave Osama Bin Laden. I’m not angry that he had a burial with rites and rituals. I think that shows a common decency, and we want the same.

FAW: Despite intense efforts to find all the remains, the fact is of the 2753 people killed at the World Trade Center, the remains of more than 40 percent have not been identified. When the 9/11 memorial opens September 11, there will be no common burial site for the remains. Thousands of unidentified bone and body fragments will be placed near the museum behind a wall with an inscription from Virgil reading, “No day shall erase you from the memory of time.” There, scientists will continue trying to identify the remains. James Young is an expert on memorials.

PROFESSOR JAMES E. YOUNG (University of Massachusetts at Amherst): Once the families know that the remains are right nearby, for them the memorial experience then maybe is just a little bit too close to the forensic work going on in the medical examiner’s office. They look at that big wall, and that’s all they can think of, not just what’s behind it but that my loved one’s remains have not been identified yet. I have nothing to show.

PETER B. GUDAITIS (Executive Director, National Disaster Interfaiths Network): It’s been a very difficult path to follow, because there are religious accommodations that families expect and deserve and by law actually have a right to. At the same time, there are all sorts of complicated impracticalities to what remains that is identified, who are the custodians of those remains, and what are remains?

FAW: In a public letter, family members involved in the memorial planning process defend what is being done here, insist it is what most families want, and argue that since the remains will not be part of the museum’s space proper, nor will they be seen by the public, that those remains are being treated “with the utmost care, respect, and reverence.” But the plan to shelter remains underground near the museum where officials are considering charging an admission fee has troubled many. Diane Horning says she won’t go to the memorial.

HORNING: I don’t think there’s much dignity in that memorial at all. I will never go to it, and I would recommend that no one go to it. I think that it is a commercial enterprise. The most important thing is the building, not the people. I find that unethical, to take my son’s remains, the remains of the people with whom he died, and have it be a draw in a museum, in a pay-to-view museum.

FAW: The Mercers say they won’t visit the site of the remains.

RUSSELL MERCER: They’re just pushing us aside. Move out of the way, we want to get this done now. These men were heroes. After 9/11, the first responders, the New York City had them and the world had them walking on water. Now they’re going to put them seven stories below ground level. It’s a disgrace to these men, a total disgrace.

FAW: At the site of mass murder, whether at the memorial for victims of the Oklahoma City bombing, Ground Zero, or the Pentagon, victims are honored, memorialized—sites where great evil has been committed, but also consecrated, made into sacred ground, given the blood shed.

YOUNG: I for one don’t believe that there is an intrinsic sacredness in any site. We make them sacred in our visits. These sites become part of a national civic religion, in a way.

FAW: The 9/11 victims will be honored at the new 9/11 memorial with their names placed alongside two pools built in the footprint of the twin towers. Hundreds of memorials to the victims of 9/11 have been built in the last ten years. In Hazlet, New Jersey, in the shadow of the goalposts where he played high school football, victim Steve Paterson is remembered. In Guatemala, four houses have been constructed in Matthew Horning’s name, and along the boardwalk at the New Jersey shore he so loved, there is a bronze memorial plaque. What is needed now, says his mother, is a final resting place, like the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

HORNING: I think that this Tomb of the Unknown should have been accessible to everyone, because it is something that happened to everyone. We have all changed, and I would like this ability to pay respect, to contemplate.

RUSSELL MERCER: That was the way I was brought up. Have some place where you can honor the remains of your loved ones. There’s no honor there, no place I can go in private, on the holidays.

JOYCE MERCER: Well, we know what happened to our Scott, but I don’t feel he’s at rest, and we can’t be at rest.

FAW: Ten years later then, despite painstaking labor here and all the effort to respect the wishes of surviving relatives, what seems clear is that no memorial can bring complete comfort, much less serve as a final resting place.

GUDAITIS: There is that sense of yearning, that loss, that reopened wound, this scabbed, you know, wound. It’s this kind of wound in the city that’s never been healed. It is a constant reminder that there’s still a chance that they could find some part of their loved one but that it’s not complete. Nothing’s complete. The journey isn’t complete.

FAW: And until it is, no matter how successful this memorial, some will continue waiting quietly with their memories and pain or tenderly maintain their own tributes for loved ones who disappeared on 9/11, and who they fear are disappearing again.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly this is Bob Faw in New York.

“I don’t believe that there is an intrinsic sacredness in any site. We make them sacred in our visits,” says Judaic studies professor James Young, an authority on memorials and on the World Trade Center memorial process./wnet/religionandethics/files/2011/09/thumb02-sacredremains.jpg

]]>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/09/02/september-2-2011-sacred-remains/9431/feed/3death,Grief,Ground Zero,Memorial,sacred space,September 11,Terrorism“I don’t believe there is an intrinsic sacredness in any site. We make them sacred in our visits,” says Judaic studies professor James Young, an authority on memorials.“I don’t believe there is an intrinsic sacredness in any site. We make them sacred in our visits,” says Judaic studies professor James Young, an authority on memorials.Religion & Ethics NewsWeeklyno8:39 Imam Mahdi Bray Extended Interviewhttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/03/04/september-10-2010-imam-mahdi-bray-extended-interview/7024/
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]]>Despite America’s trials and tribulations, one of the country’s redeeming qualities is that somehow it eventually finds a way to “get it right,” says Imam Mahdi Bray, executive director of the Muslim American Society’s Freedom Foundation. Watch these extra excerpts from his interview about young American Muslims with Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly correspondent Kim Lawton.

/wnet/religionandethics/files/2010/09/thumb01-mahdibray.jpgDespite America’s trials and tribulations, one of the country’s redeeming qualities is that somehow it eventually finds a way to “get it right.”

BOB ABERNETHY, host: Welcome, I’m Bob Abernethy. It’s good to have you with us for this special report on the most important religion and ethics news of the year that’s almost over. Our panelists are E.J. Dionne, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a columnist for the Washington Post, and a professor at Georgetown University; also Kevin Eckstrom, editor of Religion News Service, and Kim Lawton, managing editor of Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly. We begin with a video reminder of the major events of 2010 assembled by Kim.

KIM LAWTON, managing editor: It was a challenging year for interfaith relations, as American Muslims faced new tensions on several fronts. Plans for an Islamic cultural center near the site of Ground Zero generated a firestorm of debate and protest.

Protester: No mosque, not here, not now, not ever.

LAWTON: And the proposed construction of mosques in other communities generated opposition as well. A Florida pastor’s announced intention to burn the Quran on the anniversary of 9/11 set off an international furor, including violent protests in several Muslim nations. The pastor eventually backed off his plan, but controversy continued. Leaders from several faith traditions joined with Islamic leaders to denounce what they called “growing Islamophobia” across the country. Meanwhile, amid several high-profile arrests of American Muslims allegedly plotting terrorist attacks, US mainstream Islamic groups launched new campaigns to combat extremism within their communities.

Imam speaking to Muslim students: Nonviolence, the sanctity of life is valued, and it’s not the sanctity of Muslim life, it’s the sanctity of all life.

Despite some limited signs of economic recovery, many American families continued to face unemployment and foreclosures. Religious institutions were called upon to do more to help the needy even as they dealt with their own sustained budget cuts.

On the political front, religious conservatives appeared to be reenergized by the Tea Party movement and its campaign for limited government. Although the focus of the midterm elections was on economics, many religious right activists were hopeful a new Republican majority in the House of Representatives will provide momentum for their social agenda. On the other side of the aisle, Democrats were criticized for failing to reach out more to religious voters. Many faith-based moderates and liberals were disappointed that President Obama did not employ more religious rhetoric when he discussed issues like health care and the economy. And according to one survey, growing numbers of Americans, nearly one in five, believe incorrectly that President Obama is a Muslim.

Issues surrounding homosexuality continued to pose difficult challenges for many in the religious community. Faith groups were on both sides of the issue as Congress debated lifting don’t ask don’t tell, the 17-year-old ban on gays serving openly in the military. They also filed briefs on both sides in several court cases over gay marriage. The Episcopal Church installed its second openly gay bishop, Reverend Mary Glasspool, a lesbian.

The Roman Catholic Church confronted the ongoing clergy sex abuse crisis, this time centered in several European countries, and there were more questions about how high-ranking church officials dealt with the crisis. Pope Benedict XVI offered renewed apologies about the problem and promised new guidelines for handling allegations of abuse.

Faith-based charities scrambled to meet needs in the wake of several humanitarian disasters. Here in the US, social service groups tried to help people along the Gulf Coast after the devastating BP oil spill. In Pakistan, religious relief groups rushed to deliver aid after a summer of massive flooding that has left an estimated four million people still homeless. And for nearly a year now, faith-based groups have been actively working in Haiti, providing emergency aid and helping to rebuild after the January 12 earthquake, which killed more than 220,000 people and displaced almost two million. A rising cholera epidemic is complicating those efforts.

ABERNETHY: Kim, many thanks for that. To you and to Kevin Eckstrom and to E.J. Dionne, welcome. I want to get to churches and politics and economics, jobs in just a minute, but first, Kevin, what do you make of all this Islamophobia?

KEVIN ECKSTROM (Editor, Religion News Service): It’s an extraordinary place for us to be in 2010. The most extreme example you can think of on this was in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, where a zoning dispute over whether or not to build a mosque, whether they had the right to build a mosque, turned into a debate over whether Islam is actually a religion or not. And we saw it in New York in Ground Zero with the Park 51 mosque that Kim referred to in her piece. And what you saw this year was a fundamental debate over whether or not American Muslims are in a separate category or should be in a separate category from everyone else in terms of their rights, their responsibilities, and their place at the American table. And, you know, when you have a Florida pastor who can come out of nowhere and threaten to burn a pile of Qurans and get a call from the secretary of defense you know that we are not in …

LAWTON: … asking him not to do it …

ECKSTROM: That’s right. You know that we are not in an ordinary year when it comes to American Muslims.

ABERNETHY: But meanwhile there were legitimate threats. There was a Time Square bomber and others.

LAWTON: And this put a lot of pressure on the American Muslim community, as we saw, as they were trying to portray this message that Islam is not the same as terrorism. They are not mutually the same thing. But yet there were these arrests, and so they were really having to confront their own ideology and how they get their message across, and that was a big challenge for them this past year.

E.J. DIONNE (Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution): You know, we as a country have gone through bouts of this before, and I think when we confront this now it’s worth looking back. We had a party in our country formed in the 1850s in response to the big Catholic immigration, the American Party, also known as the Know Nothings, and it took us a long time to work through anti-Catholic prejudice. It wasn’t until 1960 that John Kennedy was elected president. We had enormous fights over the Mormons and their role in our society. I think what may be most distressing about this year is that the issue of reaction to Islam has become politicized in a way that it wasn’t immediately after 9/11. You know, it’s worth remembering that right after 9/11 President Bush went out of his way to visit the Islamic center here in DC. It kind of took any political sort of edge off this. I think in this election you have more of it occurring on the right and among Republicans. It was used in the campaigns by some Republican congressional candidates, and I think you are going to need some spokespeople on the conservative side who are very much opposed to Islamophobia to speak out so we can sort of go back to the moment, oddly, that we had after 9/11 when their was a lot of opposition in the country to Islamophobia, because everybody understood our need for Muslim allies around the world.

LAWTON: Well I was just going to go on top of that to say that it’s also been a challenge for leaders of other faith traditions. Muslims are looking to them, saying some of you experienced this yourselves. Where are you? Are you supporting us? Are you supporting our religious freedom? And you have seen some high-profile press conferences and statements by some of the leaders of the national religious organizations. Some Muslims wish that there were more of that going on. But I also think in some local communities, as a response to this protest in the streets, there are more interfaith dialogues going on at the local synagogue and at the local church as people try to figure out what is going on within the religious community.

ABERNETHY: There’s a correlation, isn’t there, with what’s happening to jobs and the economy and the fear a lot of people have about everything. And E.J., I wanted to ask you to move from this into the election of 2010, the Tea Party, and how some of these things appeared in the election returns.

DIONNE: What was striking about the election overall is that it didn’t shift religious alignments very much. I mean the Democrats lost ground pretty well across the board, not only among more religious voters but also among more secular voters, partly because a lot of their people didn’t show up this time around. But the Tea Party is fascinating, because on the one hand the poll data makes it very clear that there is a substantial overlap between support for the Tea Party and support for the religious conservative movement. But there is also some difference between the two. The Tea Party is mildly more secular, but what I think it is even more than the Christian conservatives were is a kind of assertively nationalist movement, and that there is a feeling—I think there is a feeling in the country that we have lost ground as a nation in the world over the last 10 years. That feels part of it. There is certainly some uncertainty over the economy, and that feeds a kind of “let’s take care of our own first” feeling in the country. And so I think watching the relationship between this new Tea Party movement and the older religious conservative movement is going to be one of the most interesting stories between now and the 2012 election.

ABERNETHY: And there was this phrase that we heard often—“We want to take back the country.” How do you transpose that? How do you interpret that?

DIONNE: Many people interpret this depending on their own politics, you know. Some people look at it and say this is a reaction to immigration and it’s a reaction of traditionally white or Anglo-Saxon Americans to the growing diversity of America. I think some people might look at it in more economic terms and say, boy, did we feel more secure 30 years ago. There was less income inequality 30 years ago. Average people could count on sort of decently paying jobs no matter what their education level was. Some of it is connected to that, and I think some of it is this sense of who are in the world now compared especially to China, but to some degree compared to India, and a lot of politicians are speaking more about American exceptionalism, we are still an exceptional nation, and I think that comes from a desire to hold on to that sense and that it’s been threatened by the downturn, by a sense our power has been depleted by the two long wars we’ve been in. And so I think there is this spiritual element to what is a national discussion about our national standing.

ABERNETHY: And Kim, between the parties did we see a God gap again in this last election?

LAWTON: Well, that’s what people used to talk about, the God gap—that Democrats appeared to be less friendly towards religion than Republicans, and President Obama and his campaign in the last presidential election and the Democratic Party had really seemed to make an effort to change that and had really reached out to the religious community. I’ve been surprised at the difficulty of President Obama’s relationship with the religious community over this past year. A lot of religious moderates and liberals have been very frustrated with him and some of his policies. They’ve been disappointed he hasn’t been speaking more about religion, and a lot of their community were frustrated that the Democratic Party didn’t appear to be reaching out to them in the past midterm election, so some of that separation still seems to be there.

ECKSTROM: I think the most interesting God gap you saw this year was the gap between perception and reality on whether or not the president is a Muslim or not.

ABERNETHY: What do you make of that?

ECKSTROM: I think when people say that he is a Muslim or that they think that he’s a Muslim, they are certainly not saying it as a compliment. It’s a way of smearing someone now in America in 2010. If you don’t like them, you can say that they are a Muslim. It’s a way of saying that he’s different, that he’s other, that he’s not like the rest of us. But you know, you have a president who speaks in Christian terminology, who went to church on Easter, who talked about finding salvation at the foot of the cross and all this. And yet there’s this gap, this interminable gap that they can’t seem to quite get over. As much as he talks, as many places as he goes, people still want to think that he’s not quite like us, and the Islam label or the Muslim label is a way of expressing that.

DIONNE: And I think there’s another side to it which Kim talked about in that excellent piece—more information per second that any video this year—and that is that President Obama talked quite a lot about religion and his own faith and his own views on the relationship between religion and public life from 2006 to 2008 when he was running for president. I think he’s done a lot less of that in the White House. Now he might defend himself saying I had awfully big problems to deal with out there. Nonetheless, I think that was a missing piece in the way he talked about issues. It was a missing piece partly, I think, on the grounds of persuasion; that providing an underlying philosophical rationale for what he was doing would have helped him, I think, in these two years. But also it’s a sort of a missing piece of who he is, and I think he does need to talk more about it. And it’s not just that minority that sees him as Muslim. I think there’s a minority that dislikes President Obama that would say almost anything about him. But there’s a larger group that just doesn’t have a sense of exactly who he is in this area, and I think he addressed it really well, I think, his critics believed that, from ’06 to ’08. I think he needs to address is again.

LAWTON: And it showed up in issues such as the health care debate or the economic issues, where a lot of times during the campaign trail he would use the phrase “we are our brothers’ keepers, we are our sisters’ keepers.” He would frame issues like health care as a moral issue and use sometimes religious language to talk about that, and he hasn’t done that as much in the Oval Office, and that has frustrated faith-based activists on the ground who believe that and who use that kind of language to mobilize their own people.

ABERNETHY: The recession continues and hurts everybody, and not least churches. Anybody want to talk about what the job problem has meant in churches?

LAWTON: Well, they’re having to do more to help people in their congregations. A lot of food banks and faith-based social services are saying they are seeing more and more people coming to them. People, middle-class people who’d never gone to a food bank before in their lives are now having to do that because of the ongoing economic problems, and at the same time religious institutions, like everybody else, are making budget cuts and slashing staff because of the difficulties.

ABERNETHY: Pastors, assistant pastors, associate pastors out of work.

LAWTON: A lot of congregations talk about that, really cutting back.

ECKSTROM: And what I’m hearing from clergy is that the recession that began in 2008 is actually now sort of catching up in reality with people as they are making their pledge payments for 2011 or going forward, where they are saying I’d like to pledge the same that I did last year but my husband just lost his job or we just don’t have as much money this year. So there’s going to be some difficult choices facing American congregations going forward from here about how they balance lower income from the pews with demand increase for services.

DIONNE: I was so struck in Kim’s piece that she kept coming back to what religious institutions are doing in the charitable sphere, whether it’s for the unemployed here or the suffering folks in Pakistan, and I think sort of one of the good news stories of the year was the publication of a book called “American Grace” by Bob Putnam of Harvard, David Campbell of Notre Dame, where they found that American—first of all, there is an enormous amount of charity that comes out of the religious community in America and that people connected to religious institutions seem to have more of a proclivity toward doing that, and that there is a kind of built-in religious tolerance in the country because of our religious diversity. It was actually a very optimistic book about the nature of religion in America, and I think Kim’s piece kind of underscored that.

ABERNETHY: Kevin, social issues. Don’t ask don’t tell was repealed. Proposition 8—I don’t know where that stands; maybe you do. Talk about those a little bit.

ECKSTROM: It was a significant year for the gay movement in all of its various forms. Gay and lesbian soldiers will now be able to serve in the military openly. On the marriage front, you had a federal court strike down California’s ban on gay marriage, and I think the most significant and often overlooked part of that ruling was that the judge said that religious feelings about homosexuality, religious bias if you will, is not enough to legislate on—that whatever your religious feelings are on the issue, that that’s not enough when it comes to civil rights, and that’s a fairly significant finding, and he found it as a finding of law, a finding of fact—that it wasn’t disputable, and that’s going to be going forward. But you also see in the sort of conservative resurgence that there’s a lot of resistance to going too fast on this issue. And so you’ll see, like in New Hampshire, where the Republicans have regained control of the legislature, they might try to repeal the gay marriage law there that’s a couple years old. You saw judges in Iowa who lost their jobs because they voted in favor of gay marriage last year. So it’s—this issue is always sort of two steps forward, one step back.

LAWTON: It’s been a difficult issue for a lot of people in the religious community whose religious beliefs teach that homosexuality is a sin, and that rubs up against civil rights and so you get to this very difficult place. So I was struck this past year by how people were examining their rhetoric, and you had the anti-gay bullying, the very tragic cases of young gay people committing suicide, and then people in the religious community looking at their rhetoric to say is it possible to oppose homosexuality without being a bully or appearing to be discriminating, and it’s a very difficult issue for a lot of people in the religious community, and how that gets worked out in society has been a challenge and will continue to be so.

ABERNETHY: And E.J., we had this interesting split within the Catholic Church this past year over the health care bill and the bishops on one side and the Catholic Health Association on the other—a lot of nuns.

DIONNE: This was a huge split. I just want to go back to the gay issue for one moment. The passage of don’t ask, don’t tell—it’s hard, I think, to fully appreciate how big a move that is. Think of where we were 15 years ago, and it passed because a number of Republican senators decided that a) they were for it on principal, but b) this is now the more popular position in the country. So we still have a lot of arguments over gay marriage, but the status of gay people has changed radically in this country in a very short time. To go to your question, this was a huge fight in the Catholic Church, and it’s going to have repercussions, where you really had a dispute over what the bill actually said. You had the Catholic bishops insisting that the language in the bill could still lead to federal financing of abortion. You had the Catholic Health Care Association, which is pro-life, and quite a large group of nuns who are also pro-life, saying we looked at this language; this bill does not finance abortion. And I think this has sort of implications for which side will the Catholic Church be on in a lot of other fights. Catholic social teaching, there’s always been a kind of amalgam: very pro-life on abortion but very much in favor of social justice. In this bill those two kind of collided. The Catholic Health Association said there is no conflict here, and I think you’re going to see a lot more arguments in the church about this in the coming several years.

ABERNETHY: And back to what you were saying before, Kevin. There’s a difference, isn’t there, between being for don’t ask don’t tell and on the other hand having that spill over into gay marriage. There’s a lot of resistance to gay marriage.

ECKSTROM: That’s right. There has been a 30-point shift in the last 15 or so years on the question of gays in the military. The shift on whether or not gays should be allowed to be married is somewhere more like in the five to ten range. It’s still very on the border of being a majority or minority of Americans who support it.

DIONNE: Although you still now have a substantial majority who support either gay marriage or civil unions. Civil unions in a very short time has gone from being a rather advanced or very liberal position to being a kind of middle-of-the-road position.

ABERNETHY: And Kim, quickly, are the Episcopalians still divided over gay bishops?

LAWTON: Many, many mainline Protestant denominations have been very divided over issues surrounding homosexuality/ Not just gay bishops—whether gay clergy can be in the pulpit, and gay marriage, whether their clergy can actually perform a same-sex marriage. So this has been and will continue to be a very difficult issue for many religious groups.

ABERNETHY: Our time is almost up. I wanted to ask each of you as you look back on the year whether you see something that we didn’t pay enough attention to—underreported. Who wants to begin? Kim?

LAWTON: Well, I was very struck by the Gulf oil spill and how that was an occasion for many conservative religious people to get a little more environmentally friendly. You saw Southern Baptists and others very struck by that tragedy and taking a look at some of their environmental positions.

ABERNETHY: Kevin?

ECKSTROM: I was struck by the change in rhetoric from the Mormon Church, actually, on the gay issue, where after the Prop 8 ruling came out and the gay bullying came, the church said, you know, we’ve been discriminated against in the past. We need to be much more careful about how we discriminate.

ABERNETHY: E.J.?

DIONNE: The decline of traditional culture-war politics on the one side and the rise of a different kind of cultural fight around immigration, Islam, Hispanics. I think that’s a shift we are going to be thinking about for a long time.

ABERNETHY: Many thanks to you, many thanks. Our time is up. Many thanks to E.J. Dionne of the Brookings Institution, Kevin Eckstrom of Religion News Service, and Kim Lawton of this program.

/wnet/religionandethics/files/2010/12/thumb01-lookback.jpgReligion and politics, interfaith relations, humanitarian disasters, war and peace. Watch the members of our annual reporters roundtable assess the most important religion and ethics news of the past year.

FAW: Sally Regenhard’s only son, 28-year-old firefighter Christian, a Marine, aspiring writer, and avid rock-climber, was killed on 9/11. No trace of him has ever been found.

REGENHARD: My son was a saint who was murdered by sinners.

FAW: Among the more than 2700 killed in Lower Manhattan that day was firefighter Bill Burke, who got his men safely out of the doomed towers before he perished.

MICHAEL BURKE: He got Engine 24 and the civilians they saved out. A fireman who worked for him said Bill Burke led the best of the best. He was better than all of us.

FAW: Nothing is more hallowed than Ground Zero for relatives like Regenhard and Burke.

BURKE: There’s just a sense of sanctity to the site that’s being offended here.

FAW: Ironically, Muslims proposing that 13-story cultural center on Park Place two blocks from Ground Zero insist they are trying to honor the site. Daisy Khan is director of the American Society of Muslim Advancement and wife of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, organizers of the project.

DAISY KHAN: We’ve been in the neighborhood for 27 years. It’s our neighborhood that got attacked, and it’s our obligation and our responsibility and really even our honor to rebuild it.

FAW: Daisy Khan insists that the center, which will include an arts theater, a place for prayer, athletics, and education, will be a testimonial to healing and interfaith harmony.

KHAN: The extremists have defined the agenda for the global Muslim community, and we wanted to amplify the voices of the ordinary Muslims who are, you know, law-abiding citizens, and it was my way of, like, helping rebuild by building a center that would create a counter-momentum against extremism.

REGENHARD: I want to make it clear that I and my—members of my group do not have anger towards Muslims. But it’s too close, it’s too painful, it’s too soon. I’m still trying to find remains of my son.

BURKE: It amounts to an insult. It comes across as intentionally provocative.

FAW: Proponent Khan, though, has drawn a line in the sand, arguing that being forced to move the site elsewhere amounts to “surrender.”

KHAN: I think it would be un-American to ask anybody to leave the neighborhood. We’re part of the neighborhood. I don’t think anybody should be driven out of their neighborhood. It’s about acceptance. Muslims are not being accepted as equals in this country yet.

MOSQUE PROTESTER: No mosque, not here, not now, not ever.

FAW: Indeed, throughout the country there are recent signs of what some call Islamophobia. Nearby, on Staten Island, an abandoned Catholic convent was to be sold to Muslims to build a mosque. But after much protest the board of the church that owned the convent voted the sale down. In Columbia, Tennessee a mosque was fire bombed. In Murfreesboro, Tennessee, vandals targeted equipment being used to build an Islamic center. And in Temecula, California the site of a proposed mosque brought forth both sides of the debate.

MANGO BAKH: Islam is not a religion. Islam is a totalitarian, terrorist ideology.

JENNIFER EIS: There is nothing to fear from them. They are our neighbors, and they want to be able to worship freely, just as our ancestors did.

FAW: Against that backdrop is it any wonder that a prominent anthropologist who’s recently completed a landmark study of Muslims in America concludes the Muslim community feels “under siege”?

AKBAR AHMED (American University): Americans are really going through a time of uncertainty, of some fear and some anger, and they want to blame someone, and in times like this that’s why you’re sitting on a tinderbox. It’s very easy to then suddenly target or make a community a scapegoat, so even something as simple and ordinary as constructing a house of worship becomes an act of defiance, controversy, debate.

FAW: The debate over that proposed Muslim cultural center here, so close to Ground Zero, has been framed as a choice between religious tolerance and honoring the dead. But some would argue the real question is not the Constitution but sensitivity—that given what happened on 9/11, shouldn’t moral claims take precedence over legal rights?

THANE ROSENBAUM (Fordham University Law School): The legal issue’s clear. There is a right to free speech, and there’s a right to the exercise of one’s religion. We have that. Now what? What happens in situations where the exercise of that free religion, right, is going to trample upon the profound sensitivities of an already vulnerable, traumatized group?

FAW: Thane Rosenbaum, a professor at the Fordham University Law School, says the relevant precedent is 1984 when, 40 years after World War II, Holocaust survivors objected to a Carmelite convent proposed near Auschwitz and Pope John Paul intervened and moved the building elsewhere. That kind of compassion, says Rosenbaum, should prevail at Ground Zero.

ROSENBAUM: This isn’t about bigotry. This isn’t about religious persecution. This really is about sensitivity and a profound sense of loss. There’s something that just doesn’t feel right about the haste, the speed, the urgency with which their mosque must be there. I don’t see the tolerance in that. It seems to me the tolerance there is only one-way tolerance: religious liberty and freedom at all costs.

FAW: In the midst of all the turmoil, some relatives of 9/11 victims—it is difficult to say just how many—do support the cultural center near Ground Zero. On that terrible day nine years ago, Herb Ouida was working on the 77th floor of one of the towers, while his 25-year-old son, Todd, was on the 105th.

HERB OUIDA: I said, “Have a great day, sweetheart.” I tell you those words because those were my last words to my son.

FAW: A son, he remembers, who overcame a long battle with anxiety to go on and graduate from the University of Michigan and have a bright future in finance.

OUIDA: I think religious tolerance honors those that were lost. What we’re saying for the Muslim world is we don’t trust you, we don’t like you.

FAW: We don’t want you.

OUIDA: We don’t want you, and that’s exactly a victory for al-Qaeda. I don’t want to give them that victory. I don’t want to give them that victory. I’d rather say to them, “We stood by what we believe in, despite what you did to us.”

FAW: Daisy Khan says most 9/11 families agree with Herb Ouida and support the Islamic center. But for relatives like Sally Regenhard, the refusal of those backing the Islamic project to consider another site is just one more indignity.

REGENHARD: You can never change hearts and minds by shoving your culture or religion down the throats of others. I think they need to understand that.

FAW: With both sides so entrenched, the outcome is uncertain. What is clear, though, is that this dispute is about far more than location or real estate.

OUIDA: I’m just afraid that we—that there’s something we’re unleashing here, something that we won’t be able to control if we don’t stop it.

AHMED: I think there’s a bigger crisis taking place right now, and that is really the battle for American identity itself. What is the America that’s going to come out of this?

KHAN: Are we going to erode our ideals, or are we going to continue to live up to our ideals and let this moment be a passing moment, and let this be the test, the litmus test?

FAW: It is much more than a litmus test, though, for some whose wounds may never heal.

REGENHARD: Right now we’re asking for sensitivity, and maybe my son could have accepted what’s happening now, but we mere mortals—we cannot.

FAW: In the midst of enduring pain, shrill protests, and calls for compromise, then, a head-on collision between legal and moral rights in a debate which could determine in post-9/11 America whether tolerance is a two-way street.

For Religion and Ethics NewsWeekly this Bob Faw in New York.

/wnet/religionandethics/files/2010/09/thumb01-islamcenter.jpg“This isn’t about bigotry. This isn’t about religious persecution. This really is about sensitivity and a profound sense of loss,” says Fordham University Law School professor Thane Rosenbaum.

]]>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2010/09/03/september-3-2010-islamic-center-controversy/6939/feed/17Freedom of Religion,Ground Zero,Islamic center,Islamophobia,Muslims,New York City,protests,September 11,Terrorism,World Trade Center"This isn’t about bigotry. This isn’t about religious persecution. This really is about sensitivity and a profound sense of loss," says Fordham University Law School professor Thane Rosenbaum."This isn’t about bigotry. This isn’t about religious persecution. This really is about sensitivity and a profound sense of loss," says Fordham University Law School professor Thane Rosenbaum.Religion & Ethics NewsWeeklyno9:08Omid Safi: Muslims in the Mosaic of Americahttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2010/08/20/omid-safi-muslims-in-the-mosaic-of-america/6866/
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2010/08/20/omid-safi-muslims-in-the-mosaic-of-america/6866/#commentsFri, 20 Aug 2010 17:13:26 +0000http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/?p=6866More →

]]>There is much heat, and not a lot of light, in the discussion about the Park51 Community Center.

No, it is not the “Ground Zero mosque.” In the crowded landscape of Manhattan, two blocks away from Ground Zero is a significant distance.

No, it is not a mosque. It is a community center with interfaith spaces, wedding halls, reading rooms, and yes, a place for prayer.

So what if it is a mosque? We have churches and synagogues close to Ground Zero. To say that having a mosque presents a problem is to suggest that Islam and Muslims somehow are held collectively responsible for the crimes of 19 terrorists. Those crimes are their own and cannot be used to label 1.3 billion members of humanity. Collective punishment runs against the very foundation of our legal system, in which each individual is responsible for his or her own actions.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf has been a leading voice in the interfaith community of New York. The mere fact that the establishment of this community center has been viewed as promoting jihadism baffles the mind and would be laughable if the charges were not so serious. Are the critics aware that this community center would include a swimming pool? This is hardly the version of Islam the Taliban or Wahhabis would like to see established in America.

Most importantly, this controversy is not ultimately about Muslims or Islam or the place of Muslims in the mosaic of America. It is about competing and contentious visions of America. It is about what kind of a society we wish to be and to become.

We do have a culture war in this country, and on one side we have people who see us as being made richer through our existing diversity, and on the other side we have people who are displaying xenophobic anxieties about the increasing religious, ethnic, and sexual diversity of America.

Omid Safi is professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the author, most recently, of “Memories of Muhammad: Why the Prophet Matters” (HarperOne, 2009).

The controversy over building an Islamic center in Lower Manhattan, says this professor of religious studies, “is about what kind of a society we wish to be and to become.”/wnet/religionandethics/files/2010/08/thumb01-safi.jpg

]]>BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: The enduring symbol of [the 9/11] terrorist attacks is Ground Zero in New York. Thousands of people every week are still visiting the site where the World Trade Center once stood. But five years since 9/11, Lucky Severson says, there’s still so much traffic and construction and so much controversy about how to rebuild that it’s hard to feel Ground Zero as sacred space.

LUCKY SEVERSON: There’s a constant flow of tour buses — people trying to comprehend. Some come to pay respect, to share grief. But for many this is just another spot on the tour map, something that happened five years ago. Time, for some, has dimmed the magnitude of what was lost here, and it seems that the building owners, the city and state cannot agree on what would honor this sacred space.

While the sides bicker over a permanent memorial site, people from all over the world come to this spot that offers little more than an overview of construction activity. It is not an easy place to make a connection to what happened here. The construction site is noisy. Commuters on their way to the underground train station bustle through the overview plaza, where about all that can be seen are pictures of before, during, and after.

Maxine Laboy escaped from the 17th floor of Tower Two. She survived but suffered a nervous breakdown. Now she volunteers as a tour guide who hopes to help volunteers feel the significance of this place.

MAXINE LABOY (Tour Guide): There really is nothing down here. That’s why we do these tours, because we realize there are so many people that come down here, and a good majority of them are looking for something to connect to, and there really isn’t anything.

SEVERSON: There is the powerful image of a cross standing among the debris, but it’s been set off to the side, and many people miss it.

Ms. LABOY: I do think there are people who come just because it’s like the thing to see, and they treat it a little bit like the Statue of Liberty or Disney World, and they stand out front and take pictures and say, “Look, I was here.” But the people who come on the tours, however, in my experience, have all been people trying to connect with it and understand it a little bit more on a personal level. So for those people it’s more of a pilgrimage.

SEVERSON: For thousands of visitors, the place that symbolizes the courage and kinship that put New York back together is St. Paul’s (Episcopal) Chapel. Once it was in the shadow of the towers, and then for months a 24-hour a day command center and sanctuary for firemen, rescue and construction workers.

REV. STUART HOKE (St. Paul’s Chapel): It appears that our higher power had a place, had a mission for this institution.

SEVERSON: Over 1700 days later, the chapel continues to comfort many hundreds each day. The Reverend Stuart Hoke, pastor of St. Paul’s, watched the second plane crash into Tower Two and then helped rescue kids from a day care center.

Rev. HOKE: There is no shrine, there is no memorial at Ground Zero. The city has not provided that or the state. This, ipso facto, has become the holy place. Many come as pilgrims. I mean they are intentional about visiting a holy place, which is what a pilgrim is. They come, first of all, and you can see them sit down in the pews and then they weep and they pay their respects to the blessed dead, and they mourn their losses, whatever those losses are.

SEVERSON: Reverend Hoke notes proudly that St. Paul’s has possibly become the most visited church in the United States.

Rev. HOKE: We thought that within the first year the wave of curiosity seekers and pilgrims, whatever they are, would have completely fallen off. We were astounded after the first year the numbers — they increased the second year. This year has been the highest number ever. We now have 35 to 40,000 people a week. We’ve had 3 million — over 3 million people in this building since the first anniversary of 9/11.

SEVERSON: For first timers, Ground Zero is often a jarring experience.

SAM CHEEK (Visitor from South Carolina): We live in a very safe community in South Carolina, and we have forgotten what happened here, and so we need to come back so we can continue to keep it fresh in our memory.

SEAMUS REYNOLDS (Visitor from Ireland): When you come to New York, the Statue of Liberty symbolizes what America meant to be all about. This is, what, the American dream meeting the kind of nightmare, if you will, and I mean something very horrible happened, and you kind of have to see both.

SEVERSON: Immediately after the terror attack, there were dozens of memorials in the city. Now only a few, like this tile fence, have endured. Steve Zeitlin is executive director of City Lore.

STEVE ZEITLIN (Executive Director, City Lore): The more this event becomes the pivotal event of the 21st century the more people want to be a part of it and connect to it in some meaningful way. They want to go to those places, and they want to feel something that connects them to that moment.

SEVERSON: Foreigners come to places like Battery Park, where there is a mangled exhibit that was once a Twin Towers sculpture dedicated to world peace. Now a flame burns near it for the victims of 9/11. And then there is the sculpture on the wall of the fire station honoring the nearly 350 firemen who were killed. From the American visitors we heard resolve.

LINDA BALLING (Visitor from California): We need to come and remember and stand tall for America.

CHRISTOPHER GLENN (Visitor from Washington): The positive out of it is that you can come to a place like this. You can look around, and you can see that people are genuinely concerned about what has taken place and kind of want to shoulder that burden of tragedy.

SEVERSON: Reverend Hoke says visitors often leave St. Paul’s with a sense of hope that he believes is desperately needed.

Rev. HOKE: You cannot imagine how people write us and say, “I was transformed by these experiences at St. Paul’s, and let me tell you why,” and that word “hope” is invariably mentioned somewhere. It looks right now like we are desperate for senses of hope everywhere.

SEVERSON: However much New Yorkers have healed in the time gone by, the city still has an open wound — the temporary morgue storing unidentified body parts which have also been found in the soon to be demolished Deutsche Bank building. There is still so much unsettled. Steve Zeitlin says New Yorkers more than anyone need a permanent memorial.

Steve ZEITLIN: They want something that is artful and beautiful and that can be a place for contemplation and be a place where they can think about what happened and try to touch what happened and move forward in a great way from it.

SEVERSON: Zeitlin believes that moving forward can occur only when all sides can agree on a suitable way to honor the dead and this sacred space.

For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, I’m Lucky Severson in New York.

ABERNETHY: A recent NEW YORK TIMES-CBS News poll found that nearly a third of New Yorkers said they still think about Sept. 11 every single day.

/wnet/religionandethics/files/2011/09/thumb01-911fiveyear.jpgThousands of people every week are still visiting the site where the World Trade Center once stood. But five years since 9/11, Lucky Severson says, there’s still so much traffic and construction and so much controversy about how to rebuild that it’s hard to feel Ground Zero as sacred space.

]]>BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: For members of St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, which was totally demolished on 9/11, this anniversary serves as a reminder of how long it’s taking to rebuild. Kim Lawton reports.

KIM LAWTON: Four years after 9/11, it’s still hard for lifelong New Yorker John Pitsikalis to visit Ground Zero. The fenced in pit there represents for him a dual tragedy — the terrorist attacks and the destruction of St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, his parish church.

JOHN PITSIKALIS (Board President, St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Parish): It was, you know — well, let’s face it, it was the loss of life that really was the unbearable part, you know. But, you know, losing that, you know, you always need your faith in hard times, and here when I want to go to church, my church is gone.

LAWTON: St. Nicholas had stood, literally, in the shadow of the Twin Towers. The tiny, three-story box-like structure had originally been a house built in the early 19th century. Greek immigrants acquired the property in the early 1920s and turned it into a home for their fledgling congregation. Pitsikalis’s grandfather was one of the founders of the church.

Mr. PITSIKALIS: He was in the travel business, and he had a hotel, and they would use that dining room every Sunday for services.

LAWTON: Pitsikalis says his earliest childhood memories are of attending Holy Week services at St. Nicholas Church with his grandfather. Today he is president of the parish’s board.

This is what St. Nicholas looked like just before 9/11. About 70 families were members, but Pitsikalis says the small church also had a wide ministry as a place of prayer for people who worked on Wall Street.

PITSIKALIS: Wednesdays were amazing, because we would open our church every Wednesday from 11 o’clock until 3 o’clock. And people would come in who were not necessarily Greek Orthodox but just wanted a place of solitude, and maybe contemplate for a little bit. And the church was actually quite crowded every Wednesday.

LAWTON: John Couloucoundis’s family is in the shipping business. He says his father got involved with the church because St. Nicholas is the patron saint of sailors.

JOHN COULOUCOUNDIS (Fundraising Committee Chair, St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Parish): There was a lot of history in that church, a lot of people that had brought icons or had contributed to make it really a little gem. But the thing you sensed more in St. Nicholas was this close-knit community, these people who had been involved with the church for generations and supported it.

LAWTON: Then came Sept. 11, 2001. As the towers around it began to fall, the tiny church never had a chance.

Mr. PITSIKALIS: That day was a nightmare. The debris from the south tower literally pancaked our church. You know, it was an unbelievable amount of debris on it.

Mr. COULOUCOUNDIS: The destruction was so complete it was amazing that we found anything at all.

LAWTON: A few remnants were dug out of the rubble: two torn icons, a charred Bible, three wax candles intact but fused together from the heat.

Church officials also found some liturgical items, including a twisted candelabra. But precious relics, including bone fragments of Saint Nicholas himself, were never recovered. The church was in shock, but the determination to rebuild was immediate.

Mr. COULOUCOUNDIS: Within about two weeks after the destruction of the church the parish had already organized, was having meetings, and was trying to figure out how to go forward.

Mr. PITSIKALIS: We weren’t going to leave that part of New York, you know. We never for one moment thought of relocating our church to another location. We were going to stay where we were founded. Where that work station is right across the way was really — with the four flags, that’s where our church stood. That’s exactly the spot.

LAWTON: But four years later they still don’t have a church. St. Nicholas is irrevocably tied to the future of Ground Zero. The church cannot rebuild or even draw up design plans until all of the complex ownership, security and architectural issues surrounding the World Trade Center site are sorted out.

Mr. COULOUCOUNDIS: The assurances that we have from the state, the federal level, the city level is that the church will be rebuilt. I think that one of the problems is the logistics of doing that amidst all the other demands and constraints of the Ground Zero area.

LAWTON: John Couloucoundis is head of the parish fundraising committee. He says in addition to being a parish church, the rebuilt St. Nicholas will include an interdenominational center that will focus on the spiritual side of 9/11.

Mr. COULOUCOUNDIS: We’re not a big parish, but we’ll have hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world wanting to stop by and spend some time in there to reflect. It’s a place where we can all come together and think about what happened and maybe spend a little time thinking about how to avoid such a thing in the future.

LAWTON: In the meantime, St. Nicholas parish members are worshipping at a Greek Orthodox church in Brooklyn. They are trying to be patient, but they’re anxious to move ahead.

Mr. PITSIKALIS: We do have a lot of older members and, you know, they’re getting frustrated. They want to be alive to see that church built.

LAWTON: Pitsikalis says the ordeal has strengthened his own faith and brought his parish together.

Mr. PITSIKALIS: It’s like, you know, when you lose a, you know, family relation. You know, you all cling together more than ever, and we depend on each other.

LAWTON: I’m Kim Lawton in New York.

For members of St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, which was totally demolished on 9/11, this anniversary serves as a reminder of how long it’s taking to rebuild./wnet/religionandethics/files/2011/09/thumb01-stnicholaschurch.jpg